


Dersebent

by Wasuremono



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Character Study, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-24
Updated: 2010-12-24
Packaged: 2017-10-14 02:12:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,108
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/144201
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wasuremono/pseuds/Wasuremono
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rose is doomed, and Kanaya probably can't save her. Maybe they can be happy anyway.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dersebent

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Ember_Keelty](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ember_Keelty/gifts).



> This was written as a Yuletide treat all too close to the deadline. I hope it's what you were hoping for, O prompter, and I hope I got even close to doing these characters justice.

Kanaya Maryam is not nearly as good a moirail as she ought to be.

Vriska is the first example, of course. Kanaya could defend her gentler strategy (primarily through the argument that it had lessened the chances of Vriska having her killed in her sleep), but it was a remarkable failure in the field of truly keeping Vriska's darker impulses in check. It's impossible to tell just how many of Vriska's plans Kanaya failed to foil -- after all, Vriska's sheer quantity of irons in the fire are legendary -- but, now that she has time on her hands to really think about it, Kanaya is quite sure she didn't do nearly enough.

What troubles Kanaya, though, is for all that sinister iron-in-fire-placing Vriska loves, she's at least a Prospit dreamer, which Kanaya can't say about her new moirail. Vriska's darker impulses are her own, at least, not the bidding of hideous outer gods. Kanaya's never properly formed a moirallegiance with a Derse dreamer before, and she's worried that that's why things with Rose aren't precisely going well. The Green Sun plan more or less _has_ to be the dark gods' doing, doesn't it? And yet Rose is convinced it's hers, and Kanaya has no idea how to dissuade her from it.

With Vriska, at least, it's always other people's lives on the line. Rose is throwing away her own.

Kanaya stares at the Trollian screen, at the staticky void that's growing all too close on Rose's timeline, and forces herself to admit the truth: the Derse part isn't helping, but that's not what's holding her back in this moirallegiance. It's Vriska all over again, another frivolous infatuation, but this one Kanaya's finding even harder to fight. She's recited the evidence to herself a thousand times: Rose is human, ghastly-looking, utterly indecorous, doomed... and yet she's beautiful in her pale way and more clever than any human has a right to be, a cleverness unsullied by the petty malice that always laid Vriska low. Kanaya can't find a counterargument for the "doomed" part, but they're all doomed. That's irrelevant now, and in any event, it doesn't stop her from feeling the way she does.

Kanaya isn't a perfect moirail, but if she ever has the chance, she thinks she could be a more than capable matesprit.

* * *

Rose Lalonde has a shockingly large amount of time on her hands.

The problem with the Green Sun plan is that there's not a lot to do in the meantime. The local fauna have been pacified, but as much as she'd like to call the day over, she's still a little too well-rested to return to Derse for the night. It's time, Rose decides, to start her other project.

Rose hovers onto one of the nearby landings and steps into one of the many empty chambers that make up the main structure of her tower. It's pleasingly wizard-like, really, all the empty rooms and winding afterthought stairs; it'd be nice if she ever had an excuse to actually live there. If there's life after the game, she'll have to remember the design principles.

Luckily, her knitting bag is within easy reach on her sylladex. The Bag of Many Things seemed like a frivolous thing to alchemize, but when she's got time to kill, it's good to remind herself that the needlekind specibus can be used for more than magic, and her tree modus would have collapsed if she didn't have a proper place to keep her materials. Rose rummages through her skeins of black yarn and half-finished scarves before she at last finds what she wants.

The skein in her hands is the perfect green, a tone she never could have alchemized but that the Bag's magic easily provided. Rose looks it over, but she can't find the slightest irregularity of color; the jade tone is flawless. It's worthy of her time. With luck, it'll be worthy of her fairy god troll.

Rose knows that, even if she manages to escape the Sburb trap, it's astoundingly unlikely that she'll ever meet the trolls in anything beyond a Pesterchum window. The whole situation is a little hopeless, really. However, where there isn't hope, there's will -- and there's the knowledge that Kanaya's watching her while she works. Even if Rose can never give her the scarf, she can give her the gesture of making it.

Magic crackles around the tips of the Thorns of Oglogoth as Rose casts on and begins to knit.

* * *

Kanaya stares.

In the back of her mind, she hopes that nobody in the computer hub is paying enough attention to see her staring, but she can't even manage to be self-conscious right now. Rose is _making something._ For _her._

It's a simple design, one wide stripe of jade green and half of another (so far) in black, but sometimes simplicity is elegance. Rose is rather less elegant, squinting as she purls her way through another row; Kanaya can't help but smile out of what any of her fellows would likely call pity. Kanaya knows better by now. There's pity, and there's something beyond it, something the hate-saturated heart ignores out of self-defense. She never has been any good at hate.

Kanaya still has the remnants of her fabric supplies in her room -- not nearly the assortment that she might have liked, but more than enough to work with, and she seems to recall having some of the proper lavender in stock. She can hardly guarantee the level of workmanship she might have offered once, but she can guarantee a sincere effort, and she'll at least manage something a little less dour than what Rose has alchemized for herself. Dark colors are a good fit for the human complexion, certainly, but the last thing she needs is to lose what vibrancy she has. Maybe if Kanaya uses the black as an accent color and works through the black-purple-lavender-white spectrum...

Kanaya realizes, with something akin to but not precisely surprise, that she hasn't thought about design since the Sgrub debacle began. Vriska's dress was her last project, and she'd finished that in time for her lusus to admire it. It's surprisingly nice to think about that project, even if that world is gone and that first flushed feeling is a bitter memory now. They're all still on their way to an unknowable but no doubt terrible endgame, Rose more than anyone, but if Rose has time to knit Kanaya a scarf in the face on her doom, then Kanaya has time to make her a dress and remember happier days.

Perhaps this is what growing up feels like. Perhaps she's finally starting to understand.


End file.
